[PDF] The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music Miller Puckette

This is a book about using a computer to record, process, create, and analyze audio signals, and in particular, musical signals. It is one of several books that discuss this subject, but I find it to be more mathematically accessible than some of the other books on the same topic such as the series on Musimathics that came out a couple of years ago. It is quite hands on, and to get the most out of it you really need to work through the various examples and exercises. The book is expensive but worth it. You’ll seldom see it marked down because of its clarity and usefulness.

To get the most from this book the reader should be competent in mathematics through algebra and trigonometry. Using math no more complicated than this the author manages to explain electronic music concepts that involve Bessel functions, Chebyshev polynomials and Fourier analysis. You don’t need to understand written music notation, although the author does use the tempered scale and the A-B-C naming convention for pitch. It is also assumed you understand the language of musical acoustics. Here I mean simple terms such as sinusoids, amplitude, frequency, and the overtone series.

Every chapter begins with a theoretical discussionof a particular topic. This is followed by examples in PureData (the author’s own open source programming language) and many clear illustrations. As the other reviewer mentioned, you could buy this book for the examples alone if you are already familiar with the theory.

The author has graciously provided a copy of his book online so that you can sample it in its entirety. Just type the book’s title into google and you should easily find it. Like the author of “The Scientist and Engineer’s Guide to DSP”, the author of this book knows that if you find the book useful you’ll want to buy a bound copy for yourself since it is the type you’ll want to write on in the margins. Highly recommended.